Why I will never go back to MV - MZ Editor mapping

Avery · 2024-01-02T08:22:58+0900

So, without trying to throw shade at anyone, a pet peeve of mine is when it comes to the question “Should I buy MV or MZ?” that there are quite some people who say there is no major difference and so sticking to the cheaper MV is the way to go. (If anyone cares: my take is that getting both is the best option anyways, since buying MV in addition basically gives you a GIANT resource pack of nor only the default MV resources but everything the community made editing wise, too). For me the defining factor is mapping, period. I come from a time when XP was the newest maker and I loved mapping and with VX up until MV the system was not only changed, but limited in a way that had me resent making maps, feeling like the only ways to make really good maps without throwing my PC out of the window was to parallax/overlay map or make tons of custom tiles, which makes mapping a chore. There are bits and pieces in my other mapping tutorials about why I prefer MZ mapping, but I wanted to put it all in one place so whenever the question comes up, here is my sorted and thought through universal answer to: “If you want to make pretty maps without too much stress, get MZ” Disclaimer: To get to a point where you get the most out of MZ’s mapping system, you will have to invest the time and understand the tilesets, their structure and all that. The help file helps a lot and testing and trying will do you a great favor. Let me try to illustrate that on a test map with editor resources first. At this point we could say: yeahhh, that looks pretty close and MV has prettier and more consistent trees, so we are good to go, just stick with MV. Well, let me elaborate. Let us say I realise that I need a different wall autotile be used for this house for whatever reason. Here is what I do in MZ: MZ allows you to pick the exact of the four mapping layers, and here my house wall is on the lowest layer, as you can see. The slightly transparent items from other layers stay so I know those are on a different layer and I know which tiles I can alter when I work where I am. Filling in the new wall tile might change the surrounding autotiles that were shiftmapped, in out example case it is the one path tile that we’d now have to edit as well, and done. Easy enough! For MV, things go differently. We only have 2 layers we can pick manually, the autotile and the B/C/D/E-tile layer. That happens by choosing the according tab on the side: This means, we have no chance to layer autotiles, something we’ll come back to later. But for now, a new wall for our house! Easy, right, we select the wall, and use fill in… and this happens: Even though we are editing the autotile layer, the layers are connected, and so it only recognizes the three connected all empty tiles as the same. And here we are at the first BIG thing I HATE about MV. What we need to to change the wall of the house is: Add the whole new wall as once and loose everything you mapped on top Carefully readd every single B/C/D/E piece where it was before… AND also do the shiftmap thing. Now this was a little boxy house… imagine you mapped something more… elaborate. This means: any added gound variation kills everything you already mapped. Adding in a new grass variant autotile below the trees? Haha you wish! Trying out which wall works best for a house by quickly swapping it out? You rather edit the tileset than remapping the same house over and over again… while the same thing in MZ is just a few comfortable clicks. A second example on the same map. I wanna cut down this tree here: For MZ, it is as I showed before: I pick the right layer - here two, and can erase it easily. One rectangle with an empty tile drawn and it is gone forever… until I readd it with the same ease. Now MV: I can use the empty tile on B to remove everything that is on this B/C/D/E layer, but it cuts the chunk out of the other tree, too, which I will have to search on my B sheet and readd. On this scale it might not look too bad, but imagine you have mapped a varied forest and need to move a bunch of trees for passability reasons. A NIGHTMARE. Why MZ is superior to MV #1: It is a lot more flexible than MV when it comes to swap out tiles you might want to change. Changing a tile does not affect the layers above or below and makes mapping a lot more intuitive and less frustrating. We talked about the different layers now, but there are more, well, layers to it. First of all, the numbers, MV has 3: the Autotile layer two B/C/D/E layers that cannot be addressed individually, so basically what you map first goes to the bottom, if you add a third thing on top, the lowest vanishes Here an example from MV: The desk is mapped first, the book second. If I wanna add clutter on top, the desk is lost. This adds to the frustration of my first problem, since if I want now my desk back, I first have to place the desk again and then the book. And again, those are default tileset examples. Maybe you have more complicated individualized tile…

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Started by Avery Jan 1, 2024, 11:22 PM 28 posts Page 2 of 2 View original ↗

masterlobo

#21 Jan 18, 2024, 10:59 PM Source

I've been using MZ for my new game and I could not agree more. The mapping tool is so much better than MV's.
PersistentDreamerGames

#22 Jan 21, 2024, 10:11 PM Source

ATT_Turan said:
Thanks for this! I had a suspicion that if I asked you about it on your status you might run with it, and you've met my expectations :biggrin:

However, I think an important thing to add:

If you have both, you can open your MV project in MZ and just use it as a map editor while preserving your use of MV plugins or whatever else you might like about it.
That is an interesting thing to consider. I chose mv over mz initially because more community made resources and more plugins made...but this is a pretty compelling argument. Are there any other tools mz has that are relevant / useful?
fizzly

#23 Feb 7, 2024, 01:23 PM Source

PersistentDreamerGames said:
I chose mv over mz initially because more community made resources [...]
But if you have both of them, you can use MV's in MZ, so there's no problem to be attached to MV ;)
zerobeat032

#24 Feb 8, 2024, 05:08 PM Source

AquaEcho said:
There's this plugin for MV
Visual Move Route - Utility for RPG MAKER MV by BlueMoon
Personally I don't see myself ever moving on to MZ. I have multiple plugins that only have MV versions like diagonal pathfinding, ZE free jump, and Mighty Mouse. Also most SRD, Moghunter, and Galv plugins didn't get ported to MZ. To migrate my project would cost me close to $200 in the cost of MZ and plugins, and with MZ getting older too I'd rather just move on to Godot if no good new replacement comes out in a few years.

If I really feel like I need MZ's map editor I'll buy it for that to use for a MV project as other people have said.

Another thing is I regularly dig into and make patches for the plugins I use and since I can't do that with VisuStella that's a big strike against MZ.
this is all why I stuck with MV... plus I don't use tilesets at all so mapping is all down to plugins anyways. BUT, I'm glad I own both. MZ does have a fair amount of good advantages. It's really plugins that cave in the whole thing for me and I just can't afford to switch to MZ right now.

If you're mapping tho like normally, yeah I can easily say go to MZ.
ygor_velasquez

#25 Apr 6, 2024, 02:00 AM Source

i had tested all versions of RM at some point in time.
XP is god for mapping purposes.
but newer versions make scripts and plugins a lot easier to manipulate within the game.
Xina

#26 Oct 30, 2025, 07:33 PM Source

Wow!!! You have convinced me! If only I had read this post while the Maker Sale was still on. Doh!
Avery

#27 Oct 30, 2025, 07:56 PM Source

There will be another one ;)
But in general, just for resource sake I would recommend getting at least XP, VX Ace, MV and MZ to everyone, since at least something from each of them can be used in the others graphicwise and that unlocks the giant pool of all the edits for those makers :)
AquaEcho

#28 Oct 30, 2025, 08:23 PM Source

Xina said:
Wow!!! You have convinced me! If only I had read this post while the Maker Sale was still on. Doh!
They go on sale every month. You can just use the 20 day trial until the next one.